Keep Your Leaves For Your Compost Pile

Once again it is leaf cleanup time. Some of us accumulate leaves more than others depending on the situation. It really is not a lot of fun to have to clean them up but if you must why not keep your leaves for your compost bin? Your homemade compost is the best nutrients you could add to your soil.

What Is Needed In Your Compost

The process of making compostconsist of organic matter, moisture, oxygen, and bacteria. What we have around our home is the organic matter that we can add. These are things like the leaves, shredded paper & food scraps.

This is a great time to gather those leaves up and instead of throwing them out you can keep them to add to your compost pile.

When it comes to food we want to use green food scraps because meats will bring on the odor and unwanted pest. The same applies to animal waste. I am no expert in making compost piles so I took the liberty to provide you this link for more information. Please Click Here.

You Need A Place For Your Pile

Once you have gathered up your components of green (nitrogen) and brown (carbon) to add to your pile you will need somewhere to mix them. Many DIY’s will make their own containers.

But if I am going to do this I want to invest in equipment that will give you the best results. What I am inclined to believe is that the best ones are the tumbling type of compost bins. You can click on the image to the right to get information on it.

Once you decided what you are going to use the next thing is to plan your location. You want it out of the way of everything and you want to keep it moist so that everything decomposes nicely.

Let’s Put It All Together

Now that you have your bin we want to put it all together and let it decompose and give you what is called “black gold” in the planting world because it is considered the best nutrients for planting.

Below is a video that wraps this whole article into one with a simple explanation of how it is done.

I hope this helped some people make their vegetable gardens & flower beds very healthy this coming spring. Remember that a lot of things we throw out can make some good compost to plant with.

If you have any questions or comments I will get the answers for you if you leave them in the comments section below. Thanks for visiting.

Super great question. The decomposition will slow down but the pile is still alive. The microbial action in a pile is exothermic which means that heat is a by-product of the chemical process of the materials breaking down. Click here for an in-depth answer.

Putting your leaves in the compost seems like such a no-brainer! How have I not thought of that? Great page! I take my leaves to the yard waste center, and I have to buy paper bags. This way I wouldn’t have to!
That turning compost container is really cool too. My compost doesn’t get mixed enough, so it doesn’t really break down. I’m gonna have a look into that, thanks!

Ronnie what a great post, I have to admit making a compost pile is definitely something I have always wanted to do but never known where to start, but this post has given me great inspiration!
I would never even have thought of putting leaves in a compost pile either which makes so much sense now that you say it!
Why is the tumbling compost bin the best option in your opinion?

Good question. There are a few reasons. You will have a less physical strain from mixing piles and moving them around. It will also look better where you store it. And more importantly, it will give you a better mix of the organic material with fresh oxygen. Click here for a more detailed explanation.

THIS IS BRILLIANT. I have a huge tree outside my house and sooo many leaves fall outside my house. This is definitely something I would invest in doing, also considering that I have a huge garden. Let’s start recycling the little things. Before I would not know where to start and what to do with the leaves, but this is great.

I really liked this post, it’s very straight to the point. I just realized I should do this now, fall is almost ending and there are so many leaves, why throw them when I could help the soil with an amazing natural fertilizer. Thanks for reminding many of us of it! Regards 🙂

You are very welcome. I am pleased when I write articles that help the next person in any way that it can. Sometimes we don’t look for things on our own but when someone stumbles upon a post that I have written with valuable information they can use it makes what I do all worth it. Feel free to visit anytime.